There will be no Vista Unified School District recall on the November ballot for Elizabeth Jaka, Angela Chunka, and Steve Lily.
According to Rosemary Ganzon and Kristi Toscano of the San Diego Registrar of Voters, no recall petitions have been turned in--not one petition, not one signature. It is now too late to turn petitions in and get the potential recall placed on the November ballot.
The reasons that Ganzon and Toscano gave for the failure had to do with time constraints. The Registrar's office needs at least 30 days to count and verify the signatures as duly registered voters in VUSD on any petitions turned in. Then the VUSD school board has to have time to act on the result and place the issue on the ballot. There is not enough time before August 6th deadline for those actions to happen. Therefore there can be no recall on the November 2nd ballot.
Cathy Glaser of the Registrar's office said that it was not uncommon for no signatures to be turned in early. With recall attempts the organizers commonly keep all the signatures until the day they are ready to turn them in--all at once.
I believe in the 1994 recall, we kept the petitions with signatures until the very end as well. However before we turned them in we did massive checking and rechecking of the petitions and signatures to make sure they were correct. Each signature has to have a correct address, the signatures must be signed exactly as the voter signed his/her voter registration card, etc. Checking and counting is a very time consuming process. I have seen no evidence of a organization by our angry friends that is capable of those activities.
Technically our angry friends could turn in recall petitions as late as August 6 and still force a later recall, however the August 6th date would require a special election to be held sometime after November. This special election would cost between $461,000 and $523,000 out of district funds according to Danielle Enriquez of the Registrar's office. Enriquez bases her estimate on the recent costs of the most similar local election--the attempted Oceanside City Council recall that failed during the special election held this spring.
Our angry friends last January when they announced their recall stunt repeatedly said they were launching it at that time so it would go on the November ballot and 'not cost the district one dime'.(1) In this they have failed. There is not enough time for it to make their self imposed deadline.
Of course it would have cost the district far more than a dime even in November. As usual our angry friends were wrong. Even had they qualified for the November 2 election, there still would have been printing and other election costs to the district. A recall on the November ballot would have in fact cost VUSD taxpayers several thousand dollars, but still that would have been considerably less than the half million dollars a special election would now cost our district taxpayers.
Not that our angry friends really care much about wasting taxpayer dollars.
Their great heroes current school board member, Jim Gibson, and former school board member, Dr. Stephen Guffanti, wasted nearly fifty million dollars of VUSD taxpayer funds on the new high school by delaying the start of construction by nearly five years. That delay resulted in increased land costs, increased construction costs, a much inferior site that needed tens of millions of dollars in grading as well as extensive and expensive road work on Highway 76.
Our angry friends have consistently and repeatedly supported Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti and their delays of the third high school along with the colossal waste of taxpayer money those delays cost. It is safe to conclude that another half million dollars of taxpayer waste would not really cause them any concern at all.
However there has been little attempt on the side of our angry friends to collect signatures. There have been no reports of signature gathers outside any stores in town. No reports of church goers confronted by signature gathers after church services. No reports of a very expensive mail in signature gathering campaign. There has been only one letter to the editor in support of the recall and that was back in January. One would have expected many many more letters to the editor if there were a real recall organization. There has virtually been no activity at all with the exception of a short lived booth briefly manned at the City of Vista Strawberry Festival.
This whole thing appears to just be a stunt to get attention for a small group of sad and pathetic folks who have no other purpose in life then to create paranoid fantasies of conspiracies that they can act on to try to hurt hardworking teachers and our fine school district.
The truth is that the voters of VUSD are sick of these people. Even the notoriously anti-union North County Times editorial board has stopped supporting our angry friends. Let's hope our angry friends can find some one else to focus their unearned wrath on. (The blogger, Roxy believed by me to be Silvia Peters, has repeatedly said she is a 'tea party' activist. Perhaps she and the others can use their excess energy in that cause and leave us alone.)
More reading on the failed and fizzled recall by our angry friends:
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/28/three-trustees-in-recall-bid-deny-criticism/
Three trustees in recall bid deny criticism
By Bruce Lieberman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:01 a.m.
OVERVIEW
Trustees targeted: Steve Lilly, Angela Chunka, Elizabeth Jaka.
Signatures needed for recall, for each trustee: About 9,600, equal to 15 percent of registered voters in the district.
What’s next: Verification of paperwork expected within two weeks, then recall backers have 160 days to collect signatures. If enough signatures are collected, the election would be Nov. 2.
VISTA — Three Vista school trustees who face a recall campaign are rebutting allegations that they are mismanaging district affairs while favoring teacher union interests. (More at URL above)
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http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_d47c6d4f-e3f5-5433-ae25-f08f7c4633fc.html
VISTA VUSD could face another recall
Activists start process that could remove three trustees
By STACY BRANDT - sbrandt@nctimes.com | Posted: January 15, 2010 7:20 pm |
A small group of community activists took the first step Friday toward getting a recall election that would target three Vista Unified School District trustees on the November ballot.
Jill Parvin, a longtime critic of the district's teachers union, presented recall letters to Trustees Angela Chunka, Elizabeth Jaka and Steve Lilly just past midnight Friday at a board meeting that began hours earlier.
(More at the URL above)
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Here are some comments of our angry friends following the above North County Times article last January:
Roxy said on: January 16, 2010, 8:41 pm
Always Right~~ so are you saying that UNION THUGS are PREDATORS? You are probably right if they bully kids the same way they bully their parents.
Congrats to Jill Parvon (sic) for having the courage to recall the three union puppets. Too bad she did not add Herrera's name to it but she is a sitting duck since she is up or reelection in November.
Where and when cam (sic) I get a petition to sign?????(sic)
****
Roxy said on: January 16, 2010, 8:36 pm the Oceanside recall is a completely different and quite distinct from VUSD.
In Oceanside the unions were doing the recall and people showed they had enough and were disgusted with union thugs.
here Vista will have an opportunity to get rid of union thugs.
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VUSD Taxpayer said on: January 16, 2010, 4:45 pm
After reading all these blogs, it sounds like the Union thugs have their talking points passed out to their mind-numbed robots!
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(1)VUSD Taxpayer said on: January 16, 2010, 4:43 pm
A recall will not cost a dime because it looks like it will coincide with the November election.
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(1)Plain Truth said on: January 16, 2010, 4:37 pm
There is no added cost to the taxpayer as this November is a general election.
****
Roxy said on: January 16, 2010, 9:48 am
Cal ~~ rage against the district? Try saying that over 85% of the budget goes to pay for their SALARIES, BENEFITS and PENSIONS.
For what? Dirty union politics and no education, kids can’t read, can’t write and cannot calculate, add the highest dropout rate in the state.
Herrera says its because of SIATech dropout recovery program, yeah OK. How and where did these students dropout from?
Before 1994 was when the KIDS COULD READ, WRITE and CALCULATE.
See this is the problem with union thugs, they don’t seam to understand kids attend school to LEAN how to READ, WRITE and CALCULATE.
****
(1)VUSD Taxpayer said on: January 16, 2010, 9:21 am
By the way, this recall sounds perfectly timed for the November election so it should not cost the school district one dime.
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VUSD Taxpayer said on: January 16, 2010, 9:19 am
Well done, Jill Parvin and her group! It's about time somebody in the community realizes how bad these 4 board members are. They don't represent us the tax payers - they are bought and paid for by the Union.
Thanks to Stacy who reminded us that the Union has had control of the Board since 1994 AND our district has done nothing but go downhill since 1994! VUSD used to be one of the top districts in Southern California now we have schools that are being sanctioned.
****
BEST PRO PUBLIC EDUCATION POSTS last January:
Cal said on: January 16, 2010, 8:02 am
Roxy - Your rage against the teachers in this district is misguided and silly. You got a lot of moxy to say the district was viable in 1994. Wasn't that when the community got together and sacked the right-wing religious fanatics who were on the board? If you can "recall" the anti-science whackos who wanted to teach creationism along side science were hell bent on taking VUSD's curriculum back to the dark ages. They were recalled because the community wanted our children to have a 21st century education.
And what white flight? Where are all the white folks flying to? Did they get angel wings?Seems like they are all still here driving their kids to school in super-sized SUV's.
This recall is going to be as popular as a fart in church. There is not enough anger in the community to sustain it this tempest in a tea party cup because the legitimately elected board is doing a fine job.
If anyone should be recalled it's that obstructionist hack Gibson, who's sole purpose on the board seems to be developing name recognition for his inevitable run for a higher public office.
****
lostnacfgop said on: January 16, 2010, 7:36 am
The District can't afford this kind of costly, wasteful distraction. The activists proposing it obviously have some energy, some willingness to work to improve things - focus it on a more reachable, more constructive goal. Volunteer in the District to close gaps; push on the existing board to make cuts; push - firmly but civilly, on the VTA to concede that teaching cuts will have to be made - the single biggest component of any school district's budget is salaries and benefits - 65 to 75 percent of most District's budgets. So when you have to cut, there are only so many erasers you can stop buying. Only so many computers you can pass on. Only so many paint jobs you can defer.
This nonsensical recall stuff wastes time, effort and money better spent elsewhere.
****
Discouraged said on: January 16, 2010, 6:34 am
Yes... let's waste half a million dollars like Oceanside did with their recall effort - all to no avail. This district can hardly afford this action, and frankly, I question the soundness (sanity?) of this woman's actions. I remember voting in the recall election back in the early 90s and it had more to do with the fact that the newly elected (Christian) trustees were trying to change curriculum that would have likely been challenged and deemed unconstitutional - and involved a very costly lawsuit. It was such big news that it was covered on "ABC World News Tonight" with Peter Jennings.
Anyone - ANYONE - elected in 2008 inherited an office that included a deficit and guaranteed tough times ahead. This recall will just further divide the community. My kids are grown, but I would probably remove them from this district - not because of the teachers, because my kids with very few exceptions had great teachers - but because of the toxic, vitriolic attitudes and actions of people who are clearly anti-public education.
What a really sad situation.
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http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/trageser/article_873b4dde-cd22-5004-a04b-e4c1c1bfd356.html
TRAGESER 94 recall still splits VUSD
By JIM TRAGESER -- jtrageser@nctimes.com | Posted: January 24, 2010 12:00 am |
This opinion piece by Jim Trageser is full of easily checked factual inaccuracies about the 1994 recall and the Vista Teacher's Association. Trageser never allowed facts to get in the way of his biases. Please do a search for Jim Trageser on this site to read more about this Glenn Beck wannabe.
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Dale Weston Letter to the Editor in support of the recall
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/letters/article_dc99e3f6-5738-561e-ba55-ed6b63810242.html
January 23, 2010
VUSD recall is a good thing
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